Once he’s inside the chalet, Putul Babu’s face, fixed in its usual expression, relaxes into the smallest of smiles. Nothing too bright – wouldn’t do to show his hand. Even so, a glance around the place is enough to put his mind at ease. There are no cloying pictures on the walls; no frilly doilies covering every surface. The couch isn’t smothered in cushions. The wood-panelling in the library – he runs a hand over it – is smooth and solid to the touch. Too smooth, perhaps, but it’ll do. There’s a near-monastic bed in the bedroom, and a side table with nothing on it.
Perfect.
Putul Babu hates things, and he hates places stuffed with things. He despises knick-knacks – can’t abide those pathetic little attempts to fill every space with odds and ends. It’s sign of weakness, this fear of the empty. Like those joggers who can’t take a step without their headphones. Not him. When Putul Babu walks – stiffly, precisely – he likes to be alone with his thoughts. Or better still, without them entirely.
Blank spaces, blank minds. Putul Babu fears neither.
***
It’s noise that he fears. It’s the eyes, staring at him, talking at him. It’s the clutter and the crowd – too many colours, too many hands and feet. Too many smiles. Pretend smiles, plastic smiles; frozen on plastic faces. In his world, chaos comes disguised as care, and Putul Babu can’t abide it – can’t abide feeling watched, handled, arranged. And all the while, to have to do so smiling, always smiling.
The world has never felt real to Putul Babu, never promised him any peace. So he escapes it, every so often – escapes from having to pretend, to bend and submit to the will of others. And he always picks his holiday homes carefully. He’s pleased that he’s chosen well again, like always. What was the last one like? It’s been so long since his lasthe cannot that he can’t quite remember anything about it.
No matter. This little place suits him. He’ll be happy here.
***
And he is, mostly. A few niggling concerns – nothing serious. Nothing he can really put a finger on.
But he also cannot lie to himself. There are small things that do bother him. For one, time passes strangely here. Entire swathes of it just flow past, without warning. Like yesterday (or was it today?), when he suddenly found himself in front of the mirror. How long had he been there? Why couldn’t he remember?
And the mirror – a silvery, ripple-like blank. Faulty, unable to show him his face – refusing to reflect his neat, wiry hair, brushed back; his thick brows that he knows look almost painted on; his face – round, soft.
The house moves him around, makes him do things, makes him lose time. And it won’t let him in on its secrets – won’t tell him how he is, one moment, in bed, and the other, on a chair, his legs folded under him, his hands holding a cup of hot chocolate.
(He made hot chocolate?)
Blank minds.
Still, some questions come, unbidden. How long was he on the road before he reached this place? Days? Weeks? He’s slipped off the past like a heavy bag dropped by the wayside. Nevermind, he can leave it there for now. He’ll return to it soon.
For now, this is Putul Babu’s cocoon. He’s happy here. Isn’t he?
He likes the quiet. The blankness. If there is something strange about the silence; if he hasn’t heard birds yet, or the wind, or even the walls creaking, he tells himself that it doesn’t matter. It’s the insulation, the weather, his good fortune.
He tells himself many things now.
***
The smell of flowers wakes him. Flowers? Bright pink, on the side table.
(How did … what?)
And why is he in bed? Isn’t it daytime?
No. He’s slept the day away. He blinks at the flowers.
Not to his taste, but maybe just part of the service.
And how … how did he sleep like this? How is he lying flat on his back, his arms folded across his chest. His fingers stiff, his legs folded.
He sits up. A pair of tiny leather shoes now rest beside the bed. Not his. Not even his size. Had they always been there? He stares at them. The soles are clean, unworn.
He can explain the flowers, but not the book, which has suddenly appeared on the table, too. He doesn’t like to read, and the words look like gibberish anyway. He ignores it.
But he cannot ignore the new bedsheets. Putul Babu likes plain linen – white, grey, sometimes even a blue. That’s what he had slept on, hadn’t he? So how has he woken up on brightly patterned fuchsia sheets?
He should complain to the manager.
(What manager?)
And there they are, those questions. Who let him in? Who is changing his sheets and bringing him flowers? Whom does he complain to? And how?
He doesn’t recall a phone anywhere.
But wasn’t that the point? To retreat from the world?
To be alone, and happy?
Is he happy? Happy to wake up on strange sheets? To find cups and saucers crowding the once-empty kitchen? To see a new thick, garish rug appear in the hallway?
And what about the unfamiliar clothes suddenly hanging in the cupboard?
Is he happy here, or just frightened?
***
It’s the drawing that does it.
He enters the library and sees it, lying crumpled on the middle of that repugnant rug. A torn piece of paper, smeared with pinks and browns. At first he thinks it’s a scribble – some careless child’s discarded sketch – but then he sees it. The thick brows. The pale cheeks. The painted-on smile.
A portrait. Of him.
Hastily drawn and then balled up, as if the artist had changed their mind.
What artist? What child? Are there others in this house? No. It was empty when he came; it is empty now. He’s the only resident.
(He has heard voices, though, hasn’t he? No – stop.)
***
Finally, Putul Babu wills himself to face the facts. That he can’t remember… anything.
Not how he got here, or what he was doing before.
For that matter – what does he do?
Where did he come from?
And to what will he return?
Blank spaces. Blank minds.
***
He wants to leave now. He wants to know if it’s time to leave, but Putul Babu doesn’t know the date anymore, or even the time. The only clock in the library is stuck at ten and two. He should ask someone to fix it.
(Who?)
Time, without his permission or knowledge, passes. The kitchen shelf changes, again. Bowls that had been stacked now stand in a neat line. A fork is stuck upright in a mug. He stares at it and feels an old, cold dread.
Things keep disappearing, reappearing, in strange places. A spoon moves from the drawer to the windowsill. A chair turned to face the wall. One morning, he finds a trail of sticky, silver foil on the floor, leading from the kitchen to the bedroom.
This isn’t a haunting. It’s mischief. It has no care for order or logic. It’s messing with him, playing with him.
***
While the past slips away from Putul Babu, the present grows louder. The noises he’s run from find him, and he begins to feel the eyes he turned away from back on him again. He feels despair like a cold chill, feels his escape crumbling.
And slowly, he begins to notice more. Footsteps. Giggles. Thuds. Walls that tremble. Meals he didn’t cook waiting for him. Clothes on his body that he doesn’t remember putting on.
Has he lost his mind? Or did he arrive without it?
***
The giggles are louder now.
He thinks he sees a dog – a pink dog!, so large it cannot fit through the doorways.
He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, a rocking chair in his bedroom, so suddenly there that it takes his breath away.
Sometimes he finds himself mid-action. Arranging the table. Folding a napkin. Straightening the rug. He doesn’t remember starting any of it.
Last night, lying on sheets he hates, he heard a child’s voice whisper:
“He can be father today!”
What could that mean?
Another giggle, softer:
“No, let’s make him sick!”
At that, Putul Babu had squeezed his eyes shut and finally let himself think that half-crazed thought:
This house is haunted.
***
He begins to wonder if he’ll ever escape, and then, swift on the heels of that, another question:
Does it matter?
Because Putul Babu, who loves how well his mind serves him, has begun to hallucinate.
This morning, a giant grey, red-eyed bird flew past his bedroom window.
Later, a brief glimpse from the same window of a pink dog in gigantic hands, so large he wanted to fall to his knees and pray to it.
In the evening, in a final attempt to escape, he flung open the front door.
Outside, another hallucination.
(Was it?)
Pure, endless blankness. Nothing.
(Isn’t this what he wanted? Isn’t this what he enjoys?)
Empty space.
His truest mirror.
***
He lies on the bed now, waiting for the end.
He knew it would come for him, that it was almost time for … for whatever it is that he must face, when, this morning, he couldn’t leave the bed. When his legs, his arms, his very body, seemed to give up on him. They flopped around, refusing to clutch, to hold, to bend. No longer his to control, to use.
He thinks of that great (pink) dog, and feels a kinship.
This cursed chalet will destroy them both.
The voices return. Giggling. Laughing. Mocking.
Closer than ever.
He steels himself, wills his mind to blankness.
***
Putul Babu’s final thoughts come as the heavens open and the eyes of … God? … peer down at him. Large, dark, curious eyes. Laughing, mischievous eyes. Eyes at play.
The hands of God – soft, warm, (alive? No, how?) – pluck him from this world.
(Is this how it ends?)
And then, a final sound before he can hear no longer; a voice, high and thrilled:
“You took the dog! This one’s mine! My favourite!”
And Putul Babu’s final thought, before he can think no longer.
(Not haunted. No. Blessed.)
Swati is a writer and editor based in India. He works extensively in publishing and literary programming.
Published 10/30/25